Rowson on ISIS and...

...and I don't know where CiF is currently, but the more mystery the better figuring this shit out.  Love Rowson.

Naughty or Nice Doesn't Come Close

I would not have believed even seven months ago that I would feel as strongly about this man as I do today.  Now, I'm long past making any excuses for him.  He is the face of all the evil his party has wrought and continues to wreak.  May a likely non-existent God have mercy on his soul.

Oh, and a premature Happy Christmas* Ev'ryone !...


* Fuck political correctness now and forever.  Fuck Starbucks, regardless of how they decorate their cups.  And fuck 'Merry'...it's Happy dammit.

Steve Bell on Osborne's Defeat on Tax Credit Cuts

Way too early to count Gid. out, but great to see him taken down, if only temporarily.

This Seems About Right

Love that Gideon haz a sad.

Dave Brown on Xi Jinping's Visit to the UK*

* Sorry, make that the overseas province of the PRC formerly known as America's Bitch.  Sorry, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The New Statesman on Robots & Capitalism

Laurie Penny:

Do androids dream of a three-day week? This week, Professor Stephen Hawking weighed in on the topic that’s obsessing technologists, economists and social scientists around the world: whether a dawning age of robotics is going to spell mass unemployment. “If machines produce everything we need,” Hawking wrote in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, “everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared – or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”

As technology advances, the question is no longer whether or not robots are coming for your job. The question is whether or not you should let them take it. 

...

We’ve seen this pattern before. In successive waves of technological innovation from the industrial revolution to the automative leaps of the 1950s, millions of working people found themselves replaced by machines that would never inconvenience their owners by getting sick or going on strike. This time, however, it’s not just working class jobs that are threatened. It seems that Robespierre was right – it’s the prospect of angry unemployed lawyers and doctors that really prompts the elite to panic, or at least to produce urgent hardbacks and suggest to major news outlets that wealth redistribution might not be such a bad idea after all.

There is little to argue with in Kaplan and Ford’s basic predictions. Whatever happens, it seems that by the time most of us reach retirement, machines will be doing far more of the jobs that nobody really wanted to do in the first place. In any sane economic system, this would be good news. No longer will millions of men and women be stuck doing boring, repetitive, often degrading work for the majority of their adult lives. That’s fantastic. Or it should be. Did you really want the job those thieving android scabs are about to take from you? Wouldn’t you rather be writing a symphony, or spending time with your kids, or plucking your nose-hair? All else being equal, don’t you have better things to do than spending most of your life marking time at work to afford the dignity of not starving?

All else, however, is very far from equal – and that’s the problem. Technology is not the problem. The only reason that the automation of routine, predictable jobs is not an unmitigated social good is that the majority of the human race depends on routine, predictable jobs, and the wages we get for them. The rioting textile workers who smashed their weaving machines in the eighteenth century did not do so because they simply loved working twelve-hour days in dangerous, dirty conditions. They did it because they had been given a stark choice between drudge work and starvation. Two hundred years after the Luddite rebellions, most of us, when you get down to it, would not work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for forty years if we had a choice – but the necessity of earning a wage gives us no other option. In fact, advanced automation should for some time have made it unnecessary for any of us to work more than a handful of hours a week, as originally foreseen generations ago by thinkers like John Maynard Keynes – but somehow, most of us are working longer hours for lower wages than our grandparents.

The problem is not technology. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we’ve created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single parent, an unemployed veteran or an unpaid intern – the logic of late capitalism grants you no right to live unless you are making money for someone else. If our economic system defines the basis of human worth as the capacity to do drudge work for someone else’s profit then the question that has troubled science fiction writers for a century is solved: not only are robots human, they may soon be more human than us. ...

No comment needed here really.  I had some shit written for another recent post from the New Statesman (regarding the absurd Tory policies on housing as it happens), but in this case, I don't disagree with enough of anything in this piece to even attempt a commentary.  Just read it if you haven't already.*


* Steph's take here, since I featured her cartoon: http://skewednews.net/index.php/2015/08/31/robots-step-aside-gravediggers-capitalism-still-flesh-blood-workers/

QOTD*: Hillary Clinton on Trade Deals

Updated the last post to reflect Hillary's belated opposition to the TPP deal, but I think this quote from her interview with Judy Woodruff merits highlighting.

...We've learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years.  Sometimes they look great on paper.  I know when President Obama came into office, he inherited a trade-agreement with South Korea.  I, along with other members of the cabinet, pushed hard to get a better agreement -- We think we made improvements -- Now, looking back on it, it doesn't have the results we thought it would have, in terms of access to the markets, more exports, et cetera.

And here I thought, listening to her at first, that she was just referring to the insane trade-deals her husband pushed through as president, but no, she's indicting her own competence & record as well.

She then goes on with some nonsense about how 'in order for us to have a competitive economy in the global marketplace', the US needs to 'raise wages' 'at home' (which the Republican meanies have blocked).  So, in other words, she doesn't get the fundamental complaint ordinary workers in the West have against these deals, nor why they are so favoured by the corporate elites, at all.  I sure am filled with confidence in Hill' as the Dem's candidate right now.


* Should really be QOYD for 'Quote of Yesterday', but I suppose that's not 'a thing.'**

** More and more, I feel like commas should be placed outside of quotation-marks, but it just doesn't feel right for the full stop/period.  I'm 'evolving' on the issue.

Link Dump (Blue Pill/Red Pill Edition)

Snowden tells us how GCHQ (and no doubt the NSA et al, also) can hack our smartphones at will, tracking us, even if the phone is switched off, taking pictures of us, etc.  And they named the various tools for spying on us after...made-up Smurf characters.  Hey, 'Dreamy Smurf' sounds kinda cute.  'Paranoid Smurf' not so much.

'Free-market' capitalism' rocks !  Bloomberg: Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices.

The 'futurologist' telling schools they should prepare children to have to work (at shitty part-time jobs in the 'sharing economy') till they are one-hundred-years-old.  In part, supposedly because of the automation and robots taking so many existing jobs.  Well, that makes sense...Not.  Or we could accept that our existing economic model, didn't make much sense in the past, makes no sense now, and is utterly batshit-insane with the future we currently face, and seek some kind of fucking alternative...

Alex Salmond's super-secret undercover identity busted after he's blocked from boarding a British Airways flight as 'James T. Kirk'.

Telegraph: How your GP is paid to stop you going to hospital.  Oh, did we mention that these are largely cancer-patients doctors are paid not to refer to hospital ?

Reason Magazine on the evils of recycling.  Need moar landfills !

BBC with the funnies: UK end-of-life care 'best in world'.  Never heard of the Liverpool Care Pathway, then, have we Beeb ?

Finally a male contraceptive, via a protein-blocker for sperm ?

Grauniad: 'Militant leftwing' councils to be blocked from boycotting products.  By which, they mean boycotts on dealing with British arms-manufacturers, and especially BDS against Israel.

Fox Sports: Eight of Iran’s women’s football team ‘are men’.  No, never !

Former Labour-govt. official admits that they 'made a mistake' fucked up royally in promoting diesel as a supposedly eco-friendly alternative to petrol.  Whoops, sorry all those who suffered and/or died as a result of the extra pollution.  Better late than never ?

Who knew ?  Telegraph: Antarctic scientists face breathalyser tests due to alcohol-fuelled fighting and 'indecent exposure'.  Guess the Antarctic might be slightly boring...

RT: UN human rights fail: Saudi Arabia to ‘investigate themselves’ over Yemen war crimes.

A breastmilk-fortifier for prematurely born babies.

Reason on the twelve-year-old suspended from school for...staring at a girl.

Taking speed-traps to a whole new level...BBC: Speed cameras hidden in tractors criticised.

Via Balko, Jerry Brown, Libertarian crusader against excessive legislation ?

Speaking of Libertarians, the candidate for the LP in Florida in trouble for admitting to sacrificing a goat, and drinking its blood.  Er, whatever dude.  Who cares ?  Now tell us how your policies won't further enrich the wealthy and fuck over the poor.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's special debate-strategy: Imagine the other candidates as cute babies.  Man must have a hell of an imagination.  Then again, he is a highly-educated neurosurgeon who believes the Earth to be six-thousand years old...

Oh yeah, here's the same Ben Carson joking about his encounters with police in his youth 'back in the days before they would shoot you.'  Hee Hee.

And Ben Carson here & here advocating arming kindergarten-teachers.  That'll work out well no doubt.

Bullshit !  PR Newswire: New Survey Uncovers, Men Who Tuck Are Happier, More Successful, And Generally More Optimistic.  Their shirts that is.  And oh yeah, the poll was paid for by Fruit of the Loom...

Al.com: Voter ID and driver's license office closures black-out Alabama's Black Belt.  So, the Republicans in Alabama instituted bullshit Voter-ID Laws, then just happened to close the DMV-offices in poorer, largely black (and thus Democratic-voting) counties.  Whadda coinky-dink !

Mirror: Jeremy Hunt wants poor Brits to work like the Chinese in new insult piled on tax credit cuts.  Well, Somalia is more like the ultimate goal.  Obscene wealth for the 1%, lowest common denominator for ev'ryone else.

War is Boring on how Russia may be using their activities in Syria to spy on the US' F-22.

Rhetorical question from the New Statesman: Why is the government giving £45m to Roman Abramovich while letting a British steelworks go to the wall?

Oh yeah, and the evil TPP deal was finally agreed (look it up).  The details may or may not be available to the public a few decades from now...when the damage is already done.  Happy hump-day !

Update: Oh lookee, Hillary-come-lately finally voiced her bold opposition to the trade-deal she previously praised & helped promote whilst in office, now that the deal has been inked by all the nations involved, and Obama has the 'Fast Track' power to ram it through Congress without the possibility of debate or amendment.

What courage from the would-be future leader of the free world, she who so vehemently opposed the war in Iraq that she voted for its authorisation, and she who hemmed and hawed for months on the Keystone XL pipeline-deal she previously supported whilst in the administration, till prolonged low oil-prices made it politically and economically unviable !  Bold bold Hillary !

'Don't need a weatherman' do ya ?

TMW: Wash, Rinse, Repeat

The fact that we never learn from our mistakes must make cartoonists' lives that much easier...and that much more dull.

Come Friendly Meteorites

Just a small one.  Only a small meteorite do I wish Manchester's way.  One just large enough to take out a convention-centre, say.  And perhaps a few smaller hotel-sized and taxi-sized buggers.  Evil fuckers can't all be in one place at the same time, I suppose.

Ministers should waste no time to make unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, a think tank director has said.

Many of those hit by a cut to the winter fuel allowance might "not be around" at the next election, said Alex Wild of the Taxpayers' Alliance.

And others would forget which party had done it, he added.

At the group's meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester, former defence secretary Liam Fox said spending cuts must be "for keeps".

Mr Wild said the Tories could not wait until a year before the next election to make the necessary cuts to the winter fuel allowance, free bus passes, the Christmas bonus and other pensioner benefits.

Mr Wild, who is research director of the think tank which campaigns for lower taxes and highlights examples of Government waste, said the cuts should be made "as soon as possible after an election for two reasons".

"The first of which will sound a little bit morbid - some of the people... won't be around to vote against you in the next election. So that's just a practical point, and the other point is they might have forgotten by then."

He added: "If you did it now, chances are that in 2020 someone who has had their winter fuel cut might be thinking, 'Oh I can't remember, was it this government or was it the last one? I'm not quite sure.'

"So on a purely practical basis I would say do it immediately. That might be one of those things I regret saying in later life but that would be my practical advice to the government."

You might well regret it indeed, you fascist piece of shit.  The few pensioners who manage to not freeze to death, not die at the hands of cuts to the NHS, and not lose their memory to Alzheimer's, should remember those words the next time the 'Conservative' Party comes knocking at the door with promises of 'Security.'


* References to meteorites hitting Manchester above are in the name of Hyperbole.  References to fascism are in the name of Accuracy.

Same As It Ever Was

But tell us again why we can't deal with the monstrous Castro brothers.

Your Completely Insane Baseless Headline of the Day

Courtesy, of the Independent no less...

The changing nature of the British jobs market has broken the link between unemployment and crime, according to new research.

The phenomenon – which saw rising joblessness matched by increased burglaries, thefts and robberies during the Thatcher years – ended in 2005, according to an analysis of crime and employment statistics.

The latest research suggests that growing trend of employers to adopt part-time working and zero-hours contracts has meant that communities are less blighted by mass unemployment and less likely to resort to crime.

The findings explain in part why Britain was not hit by a crime epidemic following the 2007-8 financial crisis which led to unemployment rising above eight per cent for the first time in more than a decade but saw a continuing long-term decline in crime.

Here's the link to the full story.  See if you can find anything there to support that supposition.

The story does mention the likely role in preventitive technology in reducing crime, though that only addresses the question of means.

Here's a hint from the other side of the Atlantic at a more likely causative factor:

But no-one seems to want to take that line of enquiry seriously, and we're going to be still debating this shit for decades to come, and still pushing Dirty Harry-style get-tough rhetoric on crime even as London sinks into the Thames and DC & NYC into the Atlantic.


Quick Update: Oh yeah, here's this from the Independent in 2007: Ban on leaded petrol 'has cut crime rates around the world'

Banning lead in petrol is responsible for declining crime rates in Britain, the United States and other countries, startling new research suggests.

The astonishing conclusion threatens to overturn current thinking on crime and punishment....

Published in the peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Research, the study reports a "very strong association" over more than 50 years between the exposure of young children to the toxic metal and crime rates 20 years later when they are young adults.

And it says the association holds true for a wide variety of countries with differing social conditions, law and order policies...

Britain – one of the last to get rid of the toxic metal – is one of the latest to enjoy a decline in crime.

But, someone seems to want to tell a very different story today, and link falling crime-rates to zero-hours contracts of all things.  Ladies & Gentleman, your Independent newspaper.

Clearly Nothing But Nothing Is Sacred in Hollywood

Disney is set to make a new Mary Poppins film, over half a century after the strict, yet much-loved, nanny first appeared on the silver screen.

The celebrated movie character will make her return in a live-action musical, Entertainment Weekly (EW) has reported.

Set in London during the Depression some 20 years after the first movie was set, the new film will also take from P. L. Traver’s children’s books where the character originated. However, the film will not be a sequel, according to EW.

...

The details of who will take on the iconic role of Mary Poppins are yet to be revealed. However, the chosen actress certainly has big shoes to fill, as Julie Andrews earned an Oscar for her depiction as the magical, singing nurse.

No creativity, no courage, and no class.  Just shameless corporate greed in pursuit of the dollars of the gullible.*


* Yes I know it's not strictly speaking a remake.  Neither is Rogue One a remake of the film we somehow insist on calling 'Episode IV'.  Fuck You Lucas.

Map o' the Day

Zooming in on the capital...

David Cameron, whose family surely wouldn't have any of their millions hidden away in tax-havens, will be addressing this any day now.

And yes, the actual map is interactive and searchable (sadly only by address), if you want to see properties down to the level of individual flats & parking-spaces, and which shell-companies based in which countries or territories, which as the Eye points out may or may not be tax-havens, own them.

Better a screenshot of this address perhaps, than some random flat owned improbably by a company in Liberia.

Though the Channel Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Seychelles, and the like sure do seem to own a remarkable amount of property in London, for what are surely, entirely normal legitimate reasons.

Horsey on Amazon

His editorial on the NYT piece here: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-amazon-brutal-workplace-20150818-story.html*

Meanwhile, Ted Rall's book on Snowden is coming out this month: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2489393,00.asp


* Would it make a difference writing about that subject if he still worked for a paper in Seattle I wonder.

Ben Jennings on the Continuing Dismemberment* of Greece

* Would rape be too harsh a word ?

In Case It Wasn't Obvious

How to get rich by running for president

The year 2008 was great for Mike Huckabee—but not as a politician. The former Arkansas governor bailed out of the presidential race in March of that year after losing steam in the early primary elections. But simply running for president elevated Huckabee to the status of celebrity, while helping him build a devoted following among southern and Midwestern evangelicals. Huckabee has since converted the renown that comes with running for national office into a business enterprise that has made him wealthy, with a palatial beachfront home, access to private jets and other perks of the 1%.

Huckabee is running for president again, of course, which makes him one of perhaps 12 or 15 candidates likely to enjoy free media attention and additional publicity funded by donors—even though polls show they have virtually no chance of winning. The presence of so many obscure candidates in the 2016 race—Jim Gilmore, Lincoln Chafee, James Webb, George Pataki, and so on—prompts an obvious question: Why are they running? Huckabee’s experience suggests one answer: Because running for president can be a highly lucrative form of work.

No serious candidate* will admit to running for president purely as a self-promotional stunt. Some may be trying to gain exposure for a more serious run for office in the future. Others may be using a run to promote their companies or personal brands, like Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000 and Donald Trump now. And many candidates no doubt feel they have a serious message to convey to voters, while perhaps also angling for a Cabinet position, ambassadorship, or other plum job if their party’s nominee ends up winning the White House. “You can emerge from the campaign as a power broker, as somebody influential with the media and with lobbyists,” says Julian Zelizer of Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. “I’m sure that’s on the mind of some of these candidates.”

Still, savvy candidates can nonetheless parlay the fame that comes from televised debates, a decent showing in a couple of early primaries, and wall-to-wall media coverage into a juicy 7- or 8-figure income. Huckabee serves as a good case study of the business of running for president because his financial disclosures represent an instructive before-and-after story. Huckabee was Arkansas governor for 12 years, from 1996 to 2007, living for most of that time on a modest salary of around $70,000. He announced his first run for president almost immediately after leaving the governor’s office, in January 2007, when he also started giving paid speeches and accepting other business offers fitting an ex-governor.

At the time, Huckabee was comfortable but far from rich. On the 2007 disclosure form he filed (required for all presidential candidates), Huckabee listed business income of about $325,000, including his governor’s salary, book royalties and a one-time consulting fee of $40,000. He also earned speaking fees of nearly $140,000 during the 15 months prior to filing the 2007 disclosure form, most of it in the first quarter of 2007. Overall, his annual income back then was close to  $400,000.

That was pretty good, but life was about to get much better for "Huck," as he's known. After dropping out of the 2008 race, he scored a Fox News TV show and a national radio program. Huckabee had written several books before running for president, but the books he’s written since then have sold much better, including his 2015 bestseller "God, Guns, Grits & Gravy."Huckabee now earns two to three times as much for giving a speech -- and he gives a lot more of them. He also runs a group of companies called Blue Diamond that handle his travel, publishing ventures and other lines of business, with his wife Janet on the payroll of at least one of them....

I just love how Yahoo! states that Huckabee was 'far from rich' whilst earning $400,000 a year.  Which is about 1400% more than the US' individual median.  But evidently...still...not enough.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with cashing in on fame, as countless other Americans have done in just about every industry. Huckabee, for his part, is an entrepreneurial character with a folksy personality that makes him popular in broad patches of middle America. Santorum has gravitated away from a traditional revolving-door career and found a way to make a living that's more in line with the conservative social values he espouses as a candidate. Both are capitalizing on opportunity in ways many other Americans would if they could.

Besides, Huckabee and Santorum are serfs compared with some other prominent candidates. Democrat Hillary Clinton typically earns at least $225,000 per paid speech, and she pulled in nearly $12 million in speaking fees in the 15 months ended March 31 of this year. Her husband Bill, the former president, earns even more....

The best thing about the business of running for president is that other people typically pay for it. A few superrich candidates fund their own campaigns—as Donald Trump is doing, and Steve Forbes and Ross Perot did before him—but most candidates spend only what they’re able to raise from donors. Huckabee raised about $16 million when he ran in 2008. All of it came from donors, meaning none of his campaign spending was self-financed. But Huckabee’s haul was a tiny fraction of what party nominees John McCain and Barack Obama raised, which limited his staying power in the primary races.

...

Huckabee, who now resides in Florida, has reportedly developed a taste for the good life, prompting controversy over whether he’s duping donors into funding what is basically a private venture that principally benefits himself and his family. But Zelizer of Princeton says most donors know what they’re paying for when they help fund a low-probability candidate. “Some of these donors may be gullible, but I think they’re making other bets,” says Zelizer. “Maybe they’re able to walk into the room with a power broker.” There are worse ways to spend money, if you've got a lot to spend.

There's the problem, right there.  We're talking about someone making a high six-figure income as if he were working poor, and the same person making millions as a relative 'serf'.  And the billionaires above that level, well of course it's all monopoly-money, play-money if you will.  And inevitably, someone with that much spare cash, will play with it.  Why the fuck not ?  You could never spend it it in your lifetime, you've already got trusts set up for your children & grandchildren; What else are you going to do with the excess cash ?  Burn it in a giant bonfire for kicks & giggles ?

The best economic arguments for more progressive taxation are fiscal ones, but above and beyond that, closer and closer concentration of wealth, is inherently toxic to democracy.**  The US has at this point passed the boundary from 'nominal democracy' to outright plutocracy.  And the tone of this article suggests that the media at any rate, are still in total denial about that fact, so removed from ordinary economic realities as they would seem to be.  Eight decades ago, even the more radical right-wing American politicians saw the dangers of continuing inequality, the threat of outright revolution if they couldn't contain the rot.  Today, we're leaving the former gilded age behind, and entering uncharted territory.  Whatever happens next, like as not, won't be pretty.


* Huckabee is a serious candidate ?

** Especially when idiots in the Supreme Court decide, à la Citizens United, that somehow money and free speech are one and the same, and that there should be no upper limits or restrictions on expenditure to buy elections.

The Indy on the Madness that is TTIP

Not that it seems any amount of warning will interest or engage our citizenry over the outrageous extra-judicial anti-democractic monstrosities that are TTIP & TPP, and their related cohorts.  But, one can but try, futile as it may be.

Corporate vampires have tried to suck $4 billion out of Romania, and with TTIP the UK could be next

TTIP's opponents may be accused of speculation, but the impact of similar trade deals abroad is terrifyingly real

When it dared to halt the production of a gold mine, the government of Romania found itself facing a massive lawsuit from a corporate mining giant in a secret "court". There's nothing about the case that makes any sense – the corporation has said it may seek up to $4 billion in "compensation", which is half of Romania’s annual public healthcare budget.

How awful for Romania to be subject to such a corporate assault, you may think. However, under a controversial trade deal between the UK and America known as TTIP, such cases could become common in Britain. So why is our government one of the biggest cheerleaders of these "corporate courts"?*

What's happening in Romania is a terrifying sign of what could happen if TTIP is passed. The corporate vampires are out for blood, and won't rest until they've drained a sovereign state of its money, and destroyed large parts of its land. The mining giant Gabriel Resources originally wanted to develop an enormous gold mine that would involve flattening four mountain tops. There were fears that this would would leave behind a behind a toxic waste lake containing dammed water and cyanide. But in 2014 a critical environmental document that was required for the project to go-ahead was annulled in a Romanian court. In the face of mass protests inside and outside the country, Romania’s parliament decided not to push through a law that would have allowed the project to continue.

Gabriel Resources has recently admitted that they've lost hope of ever building their mine. But at the same time they submitted a request for arbitration at the World Bank, demanding compensation for all the gold and silver that they were unable to extract. The company is using a Jersey subsidiary to bring the case, so it can make use of a UK-Romania investment deal, even though it's based in Canada. The company claims they have spent nearly $500 million on the project, yet in an interview the company’s CEO claimed he was seeking up to $4 billion in "compensation".

This is exactly the kind of case which that TTIP would promote throughout Europe. Through something called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, foreign corporations get access to a secret arbitration system to sue governments for "damaging" their profits. These cases are taking place with an alarming frequency using a variety of existing trade deals, but TTIP would massively expand the possibility of this taking place. It would do this by allowing all US corporations to sue EU member states and all EU corporations to sue the US government.

...

Yet despite all of this, the British government is fully signed up to the corporate courts. Last year it signed a letter that made clear that the secret court system shouldn’t be removed from the trade deal under any circumstances.

Sovereignty, who needs it ?  Says a 'Conservative' government that rants and raves about the European Union, and, to a lesser degree, the UN, but is more than happy to put unaccountable multi-national corporations above the law or oversight of any government, itself very much included.  Are the UN-'New World Order' nuts paying attention ?


* As with the question of why Osborne is selling off the taxpayers' stake in RBS at a loss, the answer is simple.  Whether you are naïve enough to think otherwise, or even stupid enough to vote for the bastards (not that the same couldn't be said about many Labour-supporters), the fact is, they don't work for you.  If they ever did, they certainly haven't for the last few decades.  And the longer it takes for the general public to wake up to that fact, the less likely it is that our circumstances will ever change.

Brian Adcock on Osborne's RBS Giveaway

Got to put the taxpayers' money back into the hands of (bailed out) private banks and billionaires, where it rightfully belongs after all.  Meanwhile, about that allowance of yours...

Maybe the GOP is Right about Obama's Foreign Policy

This is pathetic.

Obama team, military at odds over South China Sea

Some U.S. naval commanders are at odds with the Obama administration over whether to sail Navy ships right into a disputed area in the South China Sea — a debate that pits some military leaders who want to exercise their freedom of navigation against administration officials and diplomats trying to manage a delicate phase in U.S.-China relations.

The Pentagon has repeatedly maintained it reserves the right to sail or fly by a series of artificial islands that China is outfitting with military equipment. The Navy won’t say what it has or hasn’t done, but military officials and congressional hawks want the U.S. to make a major demonstration by sending warships within 12 miles of the artificial islands and make clear to China that the U.S. rejects its territorial claims.

By not doing so, they charge, Washington is tacitly accepting China’s destabilizing moves, which are seen by U.S. allies in the region such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam as highly threatening.

“We continue to restrict our Navy from operating within a 12 nautical mile zone of China’s reclaimed islands, a dangerous mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims,” Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told POLITICO.

I hate to agree with John McCain, but he's right here.

Sources in the military and within the administration acknowledge the difference of opinion privately, but would not go on the record to discuss the differences between Navy leaders and the administration.

...

The dispute is more than just a naval territorial dispute — there are global economic implications if China claims ownership of this part of the sea, which sees trillions in goods shipped between Asia and the rest of the globe.

...

China claims it has exclusive control over waters hundreds of miles off its coast, and U.S. officials say Beijing believes the man-made islands strengthen its claim to the disputed Spratly Islands chain, which China and several Southeast Asian countries claim as their own.

...

The artificial islands have added to a broader disagreement between Washington and Beijing over freedom of navigation. The United States and most other countries, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, maintain that a coastal nation has the right to regulate economic activities such as fishing and oil exploration within a 200-mile economic exclusionary zone and that it cannot regulate foreign military forces except within 12 nautical miles off its shores. China, however, has insisted it can regulate economic and military activities out 200 nautical miles.

...

More than $5 trillion worth of international trade, from Middle East oil bound for Asian markets to children’s toys bound for Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., pass through the South China Sea each year. If China can restrict the passage of ships through what today are considered international waters, that could cause shockwaves for the world economy, U.S. officials warn.

...

The National Security Council also declined to discuss the dispute or outline the White House’s view, referring questions to the Pentagon.

But the Obama administration is increasingly seen as eager to avoid a confrontation by actually doing so — at least publicly — and Republicans are trying to pressure President Obama ahead of the Chinese leader’s visit to more aggressively assert himself in the face of China’s controversial behavior.

Just think back at the reaction of the US, when Russia annexed its own historical territory in Crimea, with the agreement of most of the Crimean population.  The PRC is, with its ridiculous EEZ-claims*, and creation of military outposts out of open ocean, effectively claiming exclusive ownership of and control over an entire sea !  At the expense of the actual territorial waters of the countries in the area, and at the expense of the entire international community's rights of navigation.  And the US response ?**  'Pretty please, don't do that, huh ?  What if we ask you really, really nicely ?'  Which is pretty much what I'd expect from a government that puts short-term corporate profits ahead of all other interests.

The US can't be counted on to stand by the Philippines or Viet Nam, here, can't be counted on by its Asian allies generally, if it allows this to stand without even attempting to assert its own legal right of navigation.  Sailing in international waters is an act of provocation towards a country a thousand kilometres away ?  Is that really a precedent you want to set ?  No-one's asking you to go to war with China.  Just assert your damn legal rights, and let the PRC take the first shot, if that's really where they want to go with this.  Shit !

Oh, but they left the best piece for last in that article:

But at the same time U.S. military leaders are advocating for something else — for the U.S. Senate to ratify the UN Law of the Sea treaty that it repeatedly cites as as the international framework for navigation of the high seas.

“We undermine our leverage by not signing up to the same rule book by which we are asking other countries to accept,” Gen. Joe Dunford, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate earlier this month.

That's right, as with so many other international agreements, the US signs up for something, then won't fucking ratify it, 'cos historically, the US has kinda not given a shit, figuring it will just do what it wants, regardless of the international community.  Which becomes somewhat problematic, when it comes up across another country with the same arrogant attitude, and the muscle to stand up to the US.

In the case of the UNCLOS, the US finds itself in a club that also includes the likes of North Korea & Iran.  But not the PRC, which ratified the agreement...but then just ignores it anyway.


* And absurd territorial claims based upon a bullshit made-up map from nineteen-forty-fuckin'-seven.

** Never mind the EU's silence on the matter.